The original Quicken money manager, which appeared around 20 years ago for desktop computers, was inspired by (and intended for use with) the checkbook. Remember paper checks? The early 2009 version of Quicken Online has nothing resembling a checkbook, and it's much simpler to use than its desktop cousin, Quicken Home & Business 2009. Quicken Online is built entirely around your online financial accountsin fact, using it makes no sense if you have no such accounts.

To get started, just enter the usernames and passwords assigned to your online financial accounts. Once the integration is complete and your recent transactions are downloaded, Quicken Online presents you with several options. You can see an overview of your accountsa dashboard of sortsthat presents several kinds of data. In a vertical pane on the left, there's a list of your accounts with their current balances. Alerts appear in the upper left-hand corner (and can also be sent to your e-mail address or mobile phone) and warn you about upcoming bills, excessive credit-card spending, impending budget limits, and so on. Both Mint.com (Winter 2009) and Yodlee MoneyCenter offer similar dashboards.

The center of the screen displays how much money you have to tide you over until your next paycheck (you can set up the frequency and amount of your paychecks), as well as your risk of overdraft or low balanceneither competitor I looked at lays it out quite like this, and it's a sobering bit of information. Your checking balance and upcoming bills are displayed in the upper right-hand corner.

The Accounts tab opens a screen that displays all your accounts. You can add and delete accounts, and see balances and when the account was last updated. By checking a box, you can request that individual accounts be included in or excluded from reports. You'll find investment accounts here, but the app doesn't break them out into a separate area as Mint.com and Yodlee do.

The Transactions tab opens a listing showing your previous and upcoming financial activity. Click on an account name in the left vertical pane and you'll see a register displaying all transactions in that account for a date range of your choice. You can view upcoming transactions here and change categories if the ones Quicken Online assigns don't fit (the site will then learn from your assignments). You can also add and edit categories.

My Wallet, a new and useful feature, creates a cash-tracking account. Say you made a $100 ATM withdrawal. That would be categorized as Cash in your Account register, but having money disappear as cash isn't a particularly useful way to track your finances. With My Wallet, when you spend, say, $60 at the grocery store and $20 at the dry cleaner, you enter transactions for those and categorize them. Your Cash account would drop to $20, and you'd have much better insight into where your money went at the end of the month. Competitors don't offer this.

The Trends tab creates reports, viewable as pie charts or in list format, that show where you're spending money. You can set a date range or choose from preset ranges such as 30 days or year-to-date. Click on a slice, such as Clothing, and a bar chart displays your monthly spending for that category. You can view the list by payee or by category, and click on individual entries to see a window listing the transactions behind it (you can add transactions from here, too). Mint.com does something similar, but also lets you view spending by tags. Yodlee MoneyCenter goes further, offering a variety of reports, including custom reports.

The Goals section is where the work really gets donehere you create your budget. You start by choosing spending categories (dining or gifts, for example) and selecting a dollar amount for monthly spending. Quicken Online helps you by telling you what your average spending is, based on your transaction history. Each category is represented by a horizontal bar, so you can cast your eyes down the page and quickly see how you're doing based on how much of the bar is filled in. You can adjust budget totals at any time, as it becomes more clear how you spend and how you want to spend. The competing products I looked at offer similar tools. FAQs appear on every page, and you can access Quicken Online community forums if you have additional questions.

Quicken Online, though good, hasn't advanced to the degree that Mint.com and Yodlee have. It shares Mint.com's attractiveness and ease of use but lacks Mint's ability to track investments (thoroughly, at least), vehicles, real estate, and other physical assets. Nor does it offer Mint.com's suggestions about ways to save money on items such as credit cards. Its interface is far superior to Yodlee's, but it can't compete in terms of comprehensiveness. I'd recommend you go with Mint.com for now; it'll be easy enough to reconsider and switch if the inevitable feature wars put Quicken.com on top eventually.

Kathy Yakal has been annoying computer magazine editors since 1983, when she got her first technology writing job because she tagged along with her ex-husband on a job interview. She started freelancing and specializing in...

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